Kill Shot!

It seems that the progressive movement strategy is that it will slowly advance our nation towards the ultimate goal of a communist state and every generation of progressives seems to march us one step closer to their utopia. They enact each step of their agenda one step at a time and after they completed a step they start pushing for the next step. This is the M.O. of the recently passed healthcare bill. This puts conservatives in the defensive mode of having to fight off the next wave of progressive change. In order to repeal the progressive agenda we must find a way to put them on the defensive.

In order to do this we must enact a constitutional amendment that removes all federal laws from the registry every election cycle of the House of Representatives. Any piece of legislation that was enacted during any term would be repealed automatically and have to be revoted on during the next term of the House of Representatives which would force them to re-campaign on those laws that they passed. This will also place a check on elected politicians who will manipulate the public in order to move the machinery of government to their will (instead of the people’s will) because anything they do will get an opportunity to be re-evaluated every election cycle. This destroys the permanency of any law because they have to be maintained indefinitely by public opinion which is unlikely to happen. This almost guarantees that the progressive agenda (or any agenda) will fail since public opinion is always dynamically changing from one generation to the next.

This gives conservatives an advantage over the progressives because they have to redefend every bit of territory that they have won every six years. This allows the debate to run continuously about their agenda since their programs are always vulnerable to public’s changing opinion. This gives conservatives an opportunity to go on the offensive because it allows them to indefinitely maintain public pressure until those programs are removed. It would only be a matter of time before public support for them dwindles and once public support for them dwindles the newly elected House of Representatives will not dare re-enact those laws.

It might be a logical conclusion to assume that their might be a situation where no laws are enacted but this can only occur for those laws will not have enough public support to maintain them. Laws that have an overwhelming majority such as laws against murder will likely to be re-enacted since only a few laws actually do have overwhelming public support. This prevents tyranny of the majority since it takes an overwhelming support of any law to maintain it indefinitely. This should make conservatives and libertarians happy because fewer laws mean more freedom.
This will also be desirable for proponents of localism since their will only be a few laws at the federal level which would mean that there would be a vacuum in which state and local laws can fill. This would allow state and local laws to be the only law since their would be very few federal laws so by default local laws become the supreme law of the land since they would be the only law. The only laws in existence will be laws at the state and local level which will make local law the supreme law of the land since it will (in most situations) be the only law of the land. A state, city, or town will be the only authority over its own jurisdiction which will enhance localism.

This also has something for those who like living constitution philosophy since existing laws will never become stale because they are constantly being evaluated by public opinion. This forces unpopular aspects of a law to be evaluated in the public arena and those unpopular aspects will be changed in the newly enacted version through the democratic process. This allows for laws to change slowly over time which makes them far more accountable to the public and inline with the philosophy of living constitution since laws will never be static and evolve with the times themselves.

This also has something for those who believe in strict originalist constitution or non-living constitution because it is more likely than not that the vast majority of laws passed will test the limits of their constitutional powers. This will ultimately lead to many unconstitutional laws that will not be struck down by a supreme court because it has a natural bias towards the federal government. This will preserve the constitutional limits of power by allowing them to expire at regular intervals because having fewer laws increases the likelihood that the federal code will be in full compliance with the constitution.

The frustration that many people who want to drastically reduce the size of government is that adding laws is easier that repealing them so the result is that the bureaucracy grows and grows at the start of every new congressional term. The people may decry unpopular laws but the legislatures in power don’t want to give up their power by removing a law which is their bit of their power over the people. On the other hand, if laws were automatically deleted at the start of each new term then it would be easier to reduce the size of government since it automatically is reduced to zero at the start of every term of the House of Representatives.
Newly elected representative will have to repass the law but since the public may not like the law or some aspects of it they will either tweak the law to make if more palatable to the public or fail to have enough support to reenact it. This enhances the democratic process because the law will not become static but dynamic as public pressure will always adjust the law over time and may even decide to scrap the law all together.

This would also kill the power motive behind legislative action because they know that the power that the law exerts on the people will simply expire at the end of the term. This forces any proposed law to be proposed knowing that the public will like it enough to maintain public support for it. This would further improve the democratic process itself since all laws must have public support constantly in order for them to exist.

The main point is that this will provide a kill shot for the conservative movement because the progressives can no longer inch their way to the perfect socialist state. It would also destroy bad laws simply because they would not have the public support to maintain them forever and would greatly improve the democratic process itself since every law that exist exist because the public fully supports it.

3 thoughts on “Kill Shot!”

I wish! Unfortunately, this is probably about as likely as abolishing the IRS and enacting a flat tax or fair tax, or abolishing the Federal Reserve. I think all the really good things will all be the hardest.